Trevor (27) is a messenger who suffers a crippling fear of women. This phobia condemns him to a bitter celibacy, literally and emotionally. Slowly but surely he is torn apart by his inability to communicate with those he most desires: women. Then Trevor’s hermit-like existence is broken open by Lanh, a 25-year-old junkie who is standing on Trevor’s doorstep one night. Trevor offers him shelter, but Lanh soon finds out he has to pay a high price for Trevor’s ‘niceness’. He is dependent on Trevor for his drugs and safety, so he becomes his slave, practically speaking. And Trevor finds out that he can well use his new-found power to manipulate and terrorise to turn the weak Lanh into ‘Dorothy’, Trevor’s crazed version of ‘the ideal woman’.Surrender Dorothy won the jury prize at the Slamdance film festival (the alternative Sundance) and the prize for the bestfeature at the New York Underground Film Festival. The film was described as ‘the most disturbing film of the nineties’(Film Threat Magazine) and as a ‘compelling psycho/sexual dark comedy’. It is indeed a hard-as-nails story of physical abuse and sexual aberrations, securely told and wonderfully acted. At the last moment the actor who was to play Lanh walked out, so Di Novis decided to play the role himself. That kind of film.
